Chapter 13

Tony was home before the lab technicians got back to Natasha. They'd found an elevated level of some chemical Natasha couldn't pronounce, but it was certainly not something that belonged in Pecan Pie. If they hadn't been looking Daisy would have surely gotten away with it, but Nat was. Daisy hadn't had the same drive towards S.H.I.E.L.D since she was taken, and that meant she had to be focusing on something else. Now the Black Widow hadn't expected that something else to be killing her father, but the facts were the facts.

The facts didn't make sense though. Natasha knew Daisy loved her father. Everyone knew that. So why would she want to see him dead?

"She always wanted to be a superhero," Clint finally sighed once Natasha called him in. Steve and Tony were both too attached to Daisy to believe it. Clint and Natasha cared about her enough to do something. "You don't think she's doing this out of jealousy right? Hoping that once her dad is dead she can take his suit?"

"She couldn't even use the suit if he was dead. Tony has protocols against her accessing it. He never wanted her to be in the same kind of danger as him."

Natasha chuckled at the dry irony. He didn't want Daisy to be in danger because of him. He never expected to be in danger because of Daisy. "It doesn't make sense to me. It's like… it's like something happened to her Clint. She came back different."

He was going to say that traumatic events could do that to a person, but not to Daisy. She'd undergone so many traumatic events and only come out stronger. Something else had to be responsible… or someone else. "Did you think it was odd, that they knew she'd be at the Triskelion and yet somehow didn't know she was a trained agent?"

"Yes," Natasha nodded, looking at Clint . "The Winter Soldier… he's the top of the line. No one hiring him is short on cash or intelligence. They had to know she'd be able to escape… They let her go."

"Yes. Which means they wanted her out here… wanted her out here to kill her father. Now I can only think of one way they'd be able to convince her to do that, and it's in S.H.I.E.L.D possession."

"The Mind Stone?" Natasha remembered what Loki did to Clint better than she liked to admit. It had made him a completely different person, with completely different goals. That sounded exactly like Daisy. "You think she's been brainwashed?"

Clint shrugged, "It's just a theory. Hell I'm probably being an idiot. Good agents turn. Family turns. Maybe I'm just trying to give her an excuse that isn't there, but I just can't believe Daisy would do this."

Natasha didn't believe it either, but then again, she didn't want to believe it either. "It doesn't matter why she's doing it. Daisy wants to kill Tony, and we need to stop her before she succeeds. And we need to catch her in the act, or her father will never believe it."

"And then we try to get the real Daisy back," Clint agreed hoping Natasha wouldn't dare to say the words neither of them wanted to hear.

But Natasha dared to do everything, "If that's even still possible."

After three days, Daisy couldn't hide any more. Her father was home, Pepper was with him, she needed to get out of the house. She had to face her handler.

She knew Daisy would be out, somehow. Daisy didn't want to know how she'd known, but she did. When Daisy opened her wallet to pay for a coffee and found a note, the girl knew her handler was around. Daisy hadn't seen her, but she was there.

And there was an alleyway in Hell's Kitchen, apparently. It was a reminder, of how dangerous the Avengers were. Hell's Kitchen had basically been wiped off the map by the Avengers, the Avengers whom Daisy had failed to kill. "You promised Iron Man would be dead."

"I had no idea he had a defibrillator in his chest. I failed in my compliance."

Her handler nodded, reading the script her eye presented. She was lucky enough not to have had forced compliance, or, at least she was lucky enough to know she was being forced to comply. This poor girl had no idea, and her handler wasn't going to say anything. She liked breathing, even if she hated her life.

"Will you submit yourself to disciplinary action?"

A part of Daisy screamed to answer yes, but she blinked looking at her handler. Why would she submit to pain for having failed to kill her father? She was glad her father was alive!

"Stark. Will you submit yourself to disciplinary action?"

Do it! "No."

Her handler cursed under her breath. She did not need this. Noncompliance reflected on her as much as it did this stupid girl. "Stark, will you comply?"

"No."

Her handler sighed, and knocked the girl out. Noncompliance was often so odd. They got confused and began to refuse things, but they so rarely broke free completely. They were just like Daisy, standing there saying no, but unable to actually leave. They've been made to forget how.

Reconditioning Daisy didn't take nearly the time it did the first time, but it was dark when she finally made it back home, her compliance re-cemented. She was to the point that just grabbing a knife, walking into her father's room, and killing him seemed like a good idea. But she was held back, not by fear or emotions, but by compliance. She'd been ordered to kill Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye all at once or not at all. Then of course they added that 'not at all' was not a real option, lest she wiggle her way through that loophole.

"I was just going to call you," her father called from the couch. He didn't look well, but it was better than when he had palladium poisoning his blood, one cell at a time. "But Pepper figured you needed space."

She didn't want any space; Daisy wanted to sit on her dad's lap and be the child she'd never gotten to be. But she couldn't turn back time, and she just curled up on the couch next to him, resting her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"For what? It's not like you poisoned me."

Daisy laughed at the irony, and her heart hurt far more than Tony's in that moment. "I did though. Don't you know that."

"Sure kid," he laughed off, as everyone else had. Each time Daisy managed to break through her compliance enough to call for help everyone just thought she was kidding. Didn't anyone realize what was happening? Didn't anyone realize Daisy was trapped in her own body, and only her subconscious knew it?

"Daisy," Tony whispered, turning his head so their eyes were barely inches apart. "I want you to know that I'm glad you're home. I hate… I hate what it took for you to be here, but I'm glad you are. We never got enough time together. I missed fifteen years, and then I finally got you and the way I lived made us miss so much more time. If I hadn't been such an egomaniac Obadiah wouldn't have wanted the company and I never would have been taken, you never would have joined S.H.I.E.L.D and… and everything would be different. Hell, if I'd been more accountable and spoken to your mother again I would have been able to raise you. I know I'm the only one responsible for this distance that's always been between us, and I'm sorry."

Daisy was sorry too. "I shouldn't have joined S.H.I.E.L.D, not when I was so young. I was a stupid kid who just wanted to prove herself…"

"You're still a kid."

The thing was that Daisy's ability to nod was probably what made her not a kid at all. Kids can never recognize how young they really are. "Yeah, I am. But I'm also more than that now. I wish I could have known you when I was a kid. I wish we had more time now."

"You have plenty time yet to get sick of me," Tony reminded her, shifting to plant a soft kiss on the top of her head. "We have the rest of our lives."

And that, was exactly why all Daisy could think of was that they had no time at all.